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Department for Transport's Action for Roads plan details inaction for cycling

A network for the 21st century - as long as you want to drive everywhere

The government yesterday released ‘Action for roads: a network for the 21st century’, which details how the Department for Transport plans to spend £50 billion on roads over the next generation. How much of that will go to cycling? Somewhere between none and not much.

While the report at least mentions cycling a few times - unlike last month’s HM Treasury paper Investing in Britain’s Future, in which the level of spending on roads was announced - none of the measures mentioned has explicit funding attached. There is there is much hand-waving and talk of ‘ensuring’ and ‘encouraging’ but almost no detailed direct action to improve cycling, and there’s some worrying thinking.

For example, discussion of the strategic road network - motorways and major A roads - focuses on how and why the Department for Transport plans to increase the capacity of the network for motor traffic. Where major roads and people on bikes are mentioned together it’s assumed cyclists simply don’t want to use those routes.

“Most cycling takes place on, or alongside, the local road network, because these roads provides the most direct access to the places people want to go,” says the report, completely failing to consider that cyclists might not use major roads because even though they go straight from A to B, sharing them with HGVs doing 60+mph is terrifying and very risky.

Instead, the Department for Transport says the strategic network “can play an important role in making other roads and streets more attractive for non-motorised users. ... A well-functioning strategic road network helps keep
long-distance trafic, including lorries, away from these roads and gives cyclists more space.”

Even Australia, cited by round-the-world cyclist Mike Hall as the most bike-hostile place he rode on his trip, builds bike paths next to new or improved motorways. It seems this notion hasn’t occurred to the Department for Transport.

Instead we’ll get a second-class network whose provision is dumped on cash-strapped local councils that have proven time and again to lack the expertise to design and build safe, efficient cycling infrastructure.

But it’s okay because theDFT is going to gee up local highways engineers to think bike. “We will continue to encourage highways engineers working for local authorities to think about the needs of cyclists in their designs for new schemes,” says the report.

Is the Department for Transport going to do anything that directly benefits cyclists?

"We will continue to help cyclists by investing in the road network," says the report, mentioning £107m of recent funding and the £600m Local Sustainable Transport Fund. Campaigner and executive editor of Bikebiz.com Carlton Reid points out that this fund is being wound down and transferred into a new-build housing fund.

The document also contains an oddly-worded pledge to “cycle-proof” the major road network, which seems to be intended to mean that major roads will be modified so they do not form a barrier to riders and pedestrians.

“We are fixing 20 of the worst places for cyclists on the strategic road network,” says the report and later adds the detail: “This year the Highways Agency will be tackling 20 places, mainly around junctions, where access for cyclists can be improved.”

And, er, that’s it.

CTC reaction

Cycle campaigning charity CTC welcomed aspects of the report, but criticised much of the detail. “CTC feels that the Government should be forcing local authorities to do [provide for cyclists], not merely encouraging them,” it said.

“CTC's campaigners around the country are often battling to make sure that the Highways Agency and local authorities improve the situation when new roads are being built. Examples of schemes that are proving to be very weak for cycling are the Lincoln Eastern Bypass and the Postwick Hub interchange, part of a new road planned for northern Norwich.”

CTC campaigns director Roger Geffen said: “We welcome the Government’s commitment in its Roads Strategy to ‘cycleproof’ the major road network. Too often large roads are barriers to local journeys by bike, while those attempting to use them are 20 times more at risk of being killed than on minor urban roads. CTC has met the Roads Minister since the announcement and has urged him to ensure that local road-schemes, such as those needed for new developments, are ‘cycleproofed’ too.

You can read the whole report on the UK government website.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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10 comments

Avatar
fuzzywuzzy | 11 years ago
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Would be interesting to see how much cost it added to tag a segregated cycle path onto new build motorway/A-road. M32 into Bristol could really have benefited from having an attached cycle path

Avatar
banzicyclist2 | 11 years ago
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I've an idea, get all the politicians and civil servants involved in setting the strategy for roads onto sone bikes and go for a ride on some A roads like the A590 or A65. About a weeks worth. The survivors can then sit down together and, with all their newly acquired experience, come up a cycling compatable stratgy for roads.

I bet the gutless wonders will come up the a long list of lame excuses for not trying to ride on this sort of road.

What d'ya think?  39

Avatar
a.jumper replied to banzicyclist2 | 11 years ago
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banzicyclist2 wrote:

What d'ya think?  39

Banzi for prime minister!

Avatar
banzicyclist2 | 11 years ago
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Come on, what did you really expect from this bunch of wankers?

They're firmly in the pockets if the car lobby. In the end politicians are a bunch of stuffed shirts, they talk a lot, fiddle their expenses (they're really good at that), but ultimately unless some lobbist is paying they do nothing for the likes of you and me. No wonder fewer and fewer people bother to vote, there is no point!

£50bn and I bet we still have a road system so full of pot-holes it's like riding on the moon.

These wankers really make me mad  19

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TeamCC | 11 years ago
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None of £50 billion is still a lot, right?

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sean1 | 11 years ago
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A joke.

The Department of Transport should be renamed The Department of Cars & Lorries.

Despite the numerous parlimantary inquiries and reports the bottom line is the government refuses to budge from a car centric vision of transport.

Combine this with the vast amount of money that will be squandered on a not really needed HS2 line.....

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a.jumper | 11 years ago
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http://www.writetothem.com and ask your mp why this report is so shockingly bad. I have.

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jasecd | 11 years ago
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What a fucking joke. Read between the lines - we don't give a shit about cyclists.

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mad_scot_rider | 11 years ago
0 likes

Anyone want to place bets on how many of those "20 places" will be in or around London?

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JonD | 11 years ago
0 likes

“We are fixing 20 of the worst places for cyclists on the strategic road network,” says the report and later adds the detail: “This year the Highways Agency will be tackling 20 places, mainly around junctions, where access for cyclists can be improved.”

Whoop-de-£$%^ing-do  14

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